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Untitled Article
them safe and pleased to shore ; which prospect is not ours at present ; so that we shall content ourselves with sympathizing with our author in his evident enjoyment of these invigorating exercises , and with congratulating him on his general acuteness \ though his zeal leads him occasionally into temptations to injure the arguments of others by exaggeration , and his own by deficiency of method in his arrangement . We cannot approve , for instance , of the following method of stating the alternative between the flight of the soul at death and the resurrection of the body on the day of judgment :
" The question is , an immortal soul ? or a resurrection from death ? Let us inquire what would be our choice if that gracious Maker should say to us , * Choose ye ! an eternal state of being is assured to you . Will ye enter it at the moment when terminates your mortal career ? And breaking away from a social world to which ye are linked by a thousand affectionate ties , will ye adventure , desolate and alone , into the infinitude of the universe , to seek , ye know not where , for the Elysium of your hopes , the dwelling-place of those
who were dear to you upon earth ? Or will ye rest awhile from your labours ? Repose in the grave with those whom you loved—mingle your dust with theirs—dissolve away together into apparent nothingness ; yet at the appointed time hear my promised summons , and start together into renovated existence ? ' If such were the proposition , few would find a difficulty in making * their election . What our gracious Creator , in bis benignity , seems to have decided for us , is the distribution we should have anxiously chosen for ourselves . "—P . 67 '
Not , perhaps , if the alternative had been fairly put ; for the soul would not «* adventure , desolate and alone , " would not be ignorant where to seek , &c , if its separation from the body had been ordained by God . What would Mr . Carmichael think of the following statement of his adversary ' s argument ? " * Choose ye !—an eternal state of being is promised to you . Will ye make that promise a mockery by falling into a state of virtual annihilation , from which ye shall not be restored for ages of ages ; will ye choose corruption in
its most loathsome form , and forego all which distinguished you from the clod of the valley , all which made God your God and his angels your brethren ; or , if there be within you an indestructible germ of being , will ye commit that atom to the winds of heaven , or confound it with the sands of the desert , or plunge it in the deepest caverns of the ocean ? — or will ye rather preserve without intermission the dignity of your conscious being ,
passingwith incommunicable rapture from the chamber of mourning and the bed of disease to a region of life and love and glory , where blessed spirits are thronging around to greet you , and where , amidst all its newness and splendour , you shall at once recognize your home ?'—If such were the proposition , few would find a difficulty in making their election , " &c .
Is the one statement more fair than the other ? The faults of arrangement by which the author's own argument suffers are inherent in the plan of the work , and are perplexing to his readers , who need every aid which method can give towards understanding the drift of the writer amidst his changes of opinion . One thing , however , is clear ; that he vanquishes the i in materialists as far as he attempts it , and that if his own scheme is surrounded with difficulties nearly as great , he is ready to perceive and admit them .
In the section relating to the nature of superior beings , our author does not go over much of the ground turned up by the Angelic Doctor , though it may seem difficult on such a subject to avoid his traces . Here we have rather a speculation on what our own state and employments shall be here-
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Physical Considerations connected with Man ' s Ultimate Destination . 225
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), April 2, 1831, page 225, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2596/page/9/
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